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From Tron and Tide commercials to Stargate's breathtaking transformations, Flight of the Navigator's liquid metal ship, and X-Men's morphing Mystique, Jeff Kleiser shares his story of how he launched his own CGI company with Ed Kramer in the second episode of his CGI Fridays podcast.
SEASON 2 COMING SOON!
Industrial Light and Magic alum and CGI educator Ed Kramer (Star Wars, Stargate, The Mummy, Galaxy Quest) catches up with pioneers and innovators to learn about the coolest VFX in our favorite films and how they got started in the industry. Hilarious, informative, and surprising, CGI Fridays is a must for anyone starting a career in visual effects or computer animation, as well as fans of behind-the-scenes stories from some of the biggest science fiction films of all time.
Jeff Kleiser: I'm Jeff KLEISER,
and my partner Diana walls Zack
and I brought the first digital
actors to life. We even coined
the term synthetic Viens.
Unknown: My name is Jeff
cleanser. I'm a visual effects
supervisor. I started out my
career at a very young age
working with my brother Randall
who went on to become a film
director. He directed grease in
the Blue Lagoon and slightly the
navigator that maybe 15
different feature films but he
was my older brother and he was
making films in high school
instead of writing papers and I
thought this was a good idea. I
was an actor in his early films.
When I got to high school I
started making films superhero
movies, and it's kicked off a
real interest in cinema and and
watching movies watched all the
movies I possibly could get a
hold of Randall went on to USC
in the film department. He was a
roommate of George Lucas's and
got his career started as a film
director. I went to Colgate
University I was a math major
part of the curriculum at
Colgate was if you were a math
major, you had to take a
computer course and there was
one in computer generated music
and I thought, well that sounds
great because I was a drummer in
high school had a band called
froth in high school. So the
idea of being able to programme
100 and 32nd notes if I wanted
to was pretty interesting and
creating sounds from the
ultimate synthesiser which is a
computer creating these
different types of sounds and
noises really struck me as
Lawrence Kao: I hope you're
enjoying CGI Fridays with visual
effects pioneer Edie Kramer, who
worked for George Lucas at
Industrial Light and Magic. If
you want to read more Star Wars
stories to companions got you
covered sign up to a companion
membership at the companion dot
app. That's www dot the
companion dot a PP. Now, back to
the show,
Unknown: fascinating
conglomeration of mathematics
and art. I took a course at
Syracuse, Colgate has a winter
studies programme where students
can go off for a month and do
something off the wall. So I
decided I would go and work for
IBM and Syracuse, and I found
out very quickly that did not
want to work for IBM, or be a
salesperson for IBM products.
But I lived right below a
professor at Syracuse named
Judson rosebush. He was making
films with computers. And I
thought, wow, this is
incredible. So Johnson and I
became friends, I went back to
Colgate and I went to the fine
arts department, I said, we
could be making images with
computers, they had no idea what
I was talking about. And they
told me to go away. And I went
to the computer science
department said, you know, we
can use these computers to make
images and they said, We're
doing statistics here, you know,
going back and forth. And they
said, Well, what do you want?
And I said, Well, I want us
computer graphics major,
somewhere between Fine Arts and
computer science. And I have a
professor at Syracuse who will
sponsor me and give me the
software and look over my
shoulder. So they said, Alright,
just go away and do that. And
thankfully, Colgate allowed me
to do it my own major in
computer graphics, there were no
programmes in the country at the
time that I could get a degree
in computer graphics. You know,
in 1976. Upon graduation, I went
and worked for dolphin Sunday,
my mom went to the opera, I
think, in New York, and in the
opera guy, there was an
advertisement for dolphin
computer animation. And she sent
it to me, and I called them up.
I got an interview with Alan
Stanley and God, my work for
college, which is all digital.
And of course, he was operating
the scammy thing, this horrible
machine or making horrible
looking graphics. And he said,
Well, what I want you to do is
figure out how to make this
machine, do imagery like that.
And I said, Well, that's not
going to happen. Is this a
digital? That's analogue?
They're two different universes,
but I'll do what I can you know,
so I worked there for a year and
then I got back in touch with
Judson rosebush, and he and his
buddies at Syracuse, were
thinking that they wanted to
start a company and they wanted
me to be part of it. And so I
said, Well, the only way I'll do
it is if you come to New York,
when I'm not going to come to
Syracuse and start a company, it
has to be in New York. This is
where all the advertising
agencies are. And if we have any
chance of getting any work, it'd
be commercial work at an
advertising agency. So they all
moved to New York, and we
partnered with effects unlimited
on the optical house. This was
critical because we didn't have
any way of getting our imagery
onto film, ridiculous pipeline,
we had involved using a computer
in Maryland and shipping data to
California to put the data on a
film recorder black and white
high contrast film, and that was
sent back to New York and I
would pick this black and white
matte passes basically and on an
optical printer, do a whole
bunch of processes with colour
filters and shoot it on the
colour film multiple passes to
make colour images and it was
very, very slow and clumsy. It
took about a whole week to see
the first colour image we
figured we should get a film
recorder we bought a DICOM bed
film recorder which allowed us
to shoot colour imagery with
shading onto a negative that's
about when we got our first
motion picture contract which
was Tron, Robert Abel and
Associates did a little bit of
Tron we did a little bit of
Tron, you did the big character
right? The bit character the
opening title sequence where
pieces of Tron come together and
occlude this bright white light
source and form the Tron
character in the opening titles
and also all the bit characters
that flies around says yes No,
it was the only comic relief in
the movie and they probably
should have had more comic
relief. We did have a good time
working on Tron with Richard
Taylor. He came out from LA and
work with us. Eliminating the
optical printing step was a huge
step for us. I mean, we still
had to use optical printers to
put our imagery over backgrounds
because there was no digital
compositing at the time. But at
least we didn't have to use
optical printers just to make a
colour image. We could shoot a
colour image out onto a 35
negative and process it and get
it done. That kind of fell
apart. So we closed it. We were
ahead of everybody at that
point. I remember Colin
Rosendahl came in from Stanford
and he had a couple of Shadid
images that he showed us. Looks
pretty good, but we were way way
way ahead of them. He formed PDI
which then became DreamWorks,
you know, if we had played our
cards right, we would have been
in a whole different world. But
anyway, we closed down digital
effects. I took Bob Hoffman who
was a brilliant programmer, he
converted marijuana into
software. I met John Penny John
hired me to come out to LA to
work at Paramount on Flight of
the Navigator because we had
done testing at digital effects
for my brother on Flight of the
Navigator, but Disney was not
going to give a contract to a
company having internal
disagreements. I brought Bob and
flight of the navigate and
brought it to omnibus and we
executed that are paramount on
the tripwire machine, the triple
AI film recorders, the Thornlie,
right, the Fuli Yeah, it was
nightmarish. But we got it done
and turned out really great. The
film still holds up really well.
Many, many people have told me
that's their favourite science
fiction movie of all time. You
know, it's one of those
classics.
Ed Kramer: This is a good point
to talk about the reflection
mapping technique that you use
and the morphing technique that
you use. When grandma
Unknown: came to visit, he was
struck by two things that we had
put into commercials one was a
Tide detergent commercial, where
we took a bottle of Thai that we
had digitised and it rotates
around and changes into a map of
the United States interpolates
into a map of the United States.
He said, wow, that's cool. I've
never seen anything like that
before. He said, can we have our
spaceship change shape? And I
said, Sure, no problem give us
the two shapes of the ship will
interpolate between hover mode
into a streamlined aerodynamic
mode. So that was the first
thing that made Randall think
that computer animation was the
way to approach representing the
ship. And the other one was we
had done some reflection
mapping, Jean Miller and Bob
Hoffman had written a reflection
mapping software that we use, we
simulated a drop of water
dripping from a faucet, which
had refraction and reflection on
the spout, and it drips off. And
ramble saw that. Wow. Could you
make the spaceship reflective,
like reflect the environment?
Well, yeah, sir. We just shoot
the environment and map it onto
the spaceship and look like it's
there. We did some tests at
digital effects that everybody
loved. But the company was
spiralling down the toilet, Bob
and I went to omnibus and John
Penny hired us to do that film.
They put me in charge of motion
picture visual effects, or
digital omnibus ABL when all
three companies got together,
they put me in charge of that
division. As you know, shortly
after that the whole thing
collapsed the Canadian tax
authority, I think they were
putting some kind of shenanigans
with raising money in Canada,
they were not being truthful
about what their sales levels
were. I remember they came into
my office and said, Carrie, just
sign this. We're working on a
pilot for a TV series called
Captain power. We only done the
pilot and the document. They
want to be scientists that we've
completed 26 episodes and
they're all done and they're all
really great. And then oh, geez,
come on. It's just a formality.
I said, No, it's not for me.
It's not a formality. I don't
sign shit. That isn't true.
That's when I knew that things
were in trouble. And then I was
in Vancouver. We had a
helicopter up there. We were
location scouting for a film
called Millennium, which is
really cool sci fi script. We
were in production, you know,
scouting locations. I got a call
from DOA. And they said, Yeah,
we're having a meeting tomorrow,
you better come back down for
it. I said, Look, just send me
the notes. It's no, no, you
should come back for this
meeting. And I said, Okay, well,
how long have they said you
should bring your stuff to? And
that's what I do. Oh, this is
really bad, you know? And then
that was that horrible meeting
where 100 Navy people just were
laid off in one day.
Ed Kramer: I had no idea that
you were at the top of that
pyramid.
Unknown: Yeah, yeah, it was.
Yeah, the spooky place to be
round about that time. Actually,
before that I had met Diana at
SIGGRAPH in San Francisco in 85.
She and I are working in our
spare time building. This turned
out to be Nesta sex toner first
synthetic vision.
Ed Kramer: I remember Nestor
your dog, just so you know.
There's somebody in the planet
who actually actually remembers
who Nestor Sexton was named
after
Unknown: That's right. Anyway,
we figured out that Diana could
sculpt incredibly well, and so
she sculpted body parts and we
digitise them and when omnibus
went out of business, we bought
the poly Miss 3d digitizer at an
auction, Newt bellus helped us
get the money to buy that
digitizer at the auction, so
that we could digitise little
things. And we thought okay,
we'll call it closer walls, that
construction company, and we'll
build models for other
companies. We had good friends
at Metro light and rhythm and
hues and they all needed more
was built all the time. So we
started building models for
them. We soon got really, really
bored with building models for
other people and started
realising that one of the things
that Diana had done while we
were at omnibus was this human
figure sculpture. We digitise
that that's when we started
focusing on computer generated
actors or synthetic beings as we
call them. We did Nesta sex tone
and we follow that up with Don't
touch me, which is a music video
with our female character named
those Oh, I guess we were pretty
far ahead of the pack in terms
of creating faces that could
talk Larry Weinberg helped us by
writing a programme Dinah would
create a neutral face and then
make a mould of that so she
could sculpt different phonemes
of speech and clay. We had
multiple faces, and then we put
the same grid on all of them,
which was a real pain in the ass
to put the same grid on all
these faces, and then digitise
them, and we there's no way we
could digitise them in the same
order, it's just impossible. So
we've just digitised them willy
nilly. And then Larry's
programme which is called
reorder would go and compare the
two databases and reorder them
so that they could interpolate
from one to the other. So then
we had phonemes of speech below
the eyes you know different you
know, like faces kind of mouth
positions. And we had different
eyebrow position that we could
mix and match them to create a
character that would do what
basically whatever we wanted
them to do when we shot the
motion capture for Don't touch
me we shot perilous face
parallel bowtie was the singer
that we had shot her face and
close up so we can scrub through
the video say Okay, on frame
454, she's making them M sound,
we pull that out of our
libraries and sign that then
core frames later. It's like,
ooh, we just keyframe the whole
thing so that her face would
move and sing in sync with the
original video. That was 88 I
think we showed Don't touch me
people hadn't seen anything like
that before it was just brute
force back then, digitising,
like all night long for weeks
and weeks. All these phases, it
was horrific, but it turned out
fun. You know,
Ed Kramer: this is the great
thing about what I'm trying to
capture with this history of
visual effects because now
everybody goes to the movies.
And we see lip sync all the
time. It has become just a
given.
Unknown: It's a button now as
Lipson button.
Ed Kramer: And I know how many
CG artists that had their
hackles up when I just now said
it's a button. But I mean, you
did that before anybody else did
that you recognise that there
was a problem that needed
solving. And however brute force
is the solution was, that was
the first time it had been
solved. That's right.
Unknown: I gotta go back and
reiterate that Frank. Vince was
always a real key player for us.
He figured out lots of stuff for
Stargate and he's a spider man
ride, how to squinch on a dome
with a fisheye lens. And he was
always a key player in our
ability to keep doing new things
that hadn't been done before. If
it weren't for frankly, would
have been lost.
Ed Kramer: I think gentleman Lee
have you to make sure that Frank
gets the credit he deserves so
Unknown: well. You know, I tried
to include everybody that helped
us get things off the ground.
You were key guys. Well, you
know, for those Stargate morphs,
it was at elastic reality,
right? That
Ed Kramer: was elastic reality.
Okay, well, we'll get there, but
we're not quite there yet. So
you just finished right of the
Navigator, and you did those Oh,
and don't touch me. Then we met
Unknown: this guy, Michael Van
Hamburg. And he was doing a TV
series for Casey et called the
astronomers and what they needed
was lots of lots of footage of
cosmic phenomenon, galaxies, and
quasars and black holes and all
these sort of illustrative
animations to support their TV
series. Michael, don't touch me.
So if you can do that, you can
do some galaxies. That's no
problem. Our company and John
Whitney's company wasn't digital
productions anymore. It was his
next Whitney Deimos productions.
Maybe Whitney Deimos? Yeah,
they're a company in our company
worked for about almost a year
and a half working for KCT
strictly doing cosmic stuff.
Looking back, I'm wondering if
we shouldn't have really focused
on our synthetic viens at that
time, rather than getting
distracted by the cosmic stuff,
because there was no character
animation, all of our research
and all the work we had done was
sat on hold while we were
earning money, because we don't
really need any money from this
industry. In this case, et was
actually paying us so we had to
divert our attention to that may
not have been the smartest thing
to do. I don't know, looking
back.
Ed Kramer: I don't think there's
any way of looking back on that
and saying you made the wrong
decision. You just got to keep
making money. Right?
Unknown: Well, the next pivotal
thing that happened was the
riots in the Rodney King riots
in LA. And Doug Trumbull was
visiting all the different
computer animation companies in
LA because he had a contract to
work on a big project for the
Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas. He
needed a company that could do
computer generated animation.
His bailiwick was computer
controlled cameras, you know,
shooting models and repeatable
camera pathways that he could
produce sort of typical motion
control stuff, but he didn't
really have any experience
making computer generated things
and he needed that for some of
the ideas that he was coming up
with for the Luxor hotel. We had
a meeting right here on this pad
You know, I'll never forget it.
Doug is sitting facing me, LA's
behind him. And he said, Well, I
want to do this project. But I
really want to do it in
Massachusetts, where I'm
headquartered. And I said, Well,
we will pick up our company, and
we'll hire a bunch of people.
And we'll move to Massachusetts
to set up with you so that your
emotion control and our computer
generated elements can be
integrated in the same building,
you know, because the internet
was not in a position where you
can send stuff back and forth at
all. So we were the only company
that was willing to actually
move there and move in with him.
So he hired us. And by the way,
Doug, sitting here, there's
smoke coming, coming up from Los
Angeles in the background. And I
said, Yeah, let's go. Let's go
now before the closest airport.
We held onto our house here. And
we went to Massachusetts and set
up camp with Doug in Linux. And
yeah, we did that looks or
trilogy of visual effects
attractions that we all came to
know and love. You weren't one
of our three team leaders. We
had three teams, you were head
of one of them. And I guess
dairy Frost was head of another
one. We had a fantastic crew of
people that we brought to Linux.
And then we brought the French
guys in. Because we needed their
shader from what was that
company that wavefront bought?
Ed Kramer: Oh TDI,
Unknown: a TDI. Yeah, they're
shader, we needed that shader.
And we needed them to help us
figure out how to create the
vector base motion blur. I went
from like six hours a frame down
to like five minutes a frame we
went. For the other thing that
was funny was the PVS the power
of visualisation system that
Serge Schinsky was programming
for, and we were using it for
rendering, we thought it's got
32 processors, and we're gonna
be able to render this thing
like crazy. So we got the whole
thing set up, and we're watching
it. So you're 32 Lights showing
all the processors and we said,
Okay, go. And there's like one
light, just blinking. So what's
going on? Is this Oh, that's
loading the data. For the first
frame. That's one processor.
Yeah, one process. So it's like
goes for like three minutes. And
the frame is rendered? And then
yeah, but that doesn't help us.
It still takes forever.
Ed Kramer: That is a great story
about that era of time.
Unknown: That was a really,
really interesting, fun project.
You know, we had three different
attractions. One was a
stereoscopic 35 millimetre film
that was projected, during their
show, Scan Type TV show, right,
that stereoscopic film was
projected within that, right,
and then there was a vertical
VistaVision. on its side, that
real tall format, 70 feet tall.
And then there was the curved
screen in search of the obelisk,
which was all the Egyptian stuff
flying through the pyramid. I
remember one time we went to go
see the motion base as a
separate building. The guys were
just screwing around, they said,
Well, I wonder what would happen
if we put a square wave into the
horizontal, and this whole big
thing, go, bam, bam, bam. And if
somebody had been on the chair,
centrifugal force would just rip
their head off. I mean, this
thing was like two inch
hydraulic cables driving this
thing is like, Doug was very
adamant that he wanted the
motion base to be able to go
left and right forward,
backward, up and down. But not
tilt at all is always normal to
the ground because he didn't
want people to get ill. We had
to build that into the the
programming of the motion base
and connecting with the motion
of the cameras, you know, trying
to get that all to work in
orthographic pathways is
interesting.
Ed Kramer: What would you say
were some of the things that we
did for Luxor that represented
advancements in the field of
CGI,
Unknown: one of the things that
I remember was a challenge was
making contrail missiles that
were being fired at us, they had
to leave like a smoke trail.
Nobody done smoke trails in that
computer animation before. So we
had to figure out a whole bunch
of little pictures of smoke
lined up with a certain amount
of opacity. I remember one time
we were rendering, and suddenly
it went from about an hour frame
to like, one frame was like
taking 15 hours we weren't aware
of a camera was like inside one
of these smoke trails, looking
down a whole long line of semi
transparent smoke images and
just stopped the render.
Ed Kramer: That was actually me.
You remember that? Yeah. And I
had worked with Jim Horahan, who
was developing the particle
system that eventually became my
as particle system. And then I
eventually worked with Jim at
Industrial Light and Magic. He
helped me with a rock monster
stuff from Galaxy Quest was
called sprites with an image,
right? Little pictures, they're
born, and then they have a
lifespan and they die. And as
they die, they get more
transparent. And so yeah, so
that was kind of the first
contrast. The other thing that I
remember we had to solve
technically and Serge was a big
part of this was getting our
digital humans because we had
some thespians. We actually had
a bunch of people in video games
today. They're just doing an
idol. That's what it's called.
We had to put them on every
level of the miniature that Doug
had created with the Dave
Hardberger and Hardberger. Yeah,
those guys that was a challenge
that I remember we had to figure
out and I think Serge was kind
of a big brain behind that when
I'm getting
Unknown: Luxor project and Judge
Dredd intermingled in my mind
for Judge Dredd. We did the
sintesi. And Stallone and Rob
Schneider riding on the
motorcycles you know, with a
computer generated so that we
could have the length of flight
that they needed that they
couldn't shoot in London, we
built dreads motorcycle, we
built it on a gimbal so he could
rock it back and forth, Diana
did a study of body proportions
and she determined that her body
was the closest in proportions
to some investors to loans she
was the one riding on the bike,
you know, with motion capture.
And we were watching on the
video disc a playback at the
scene. And then we had you know,
guys that would rock the
motorcycle forward and backward
to match the scene. And we'd be
tracking her body motion just to
get the dynamics of riding this
motorcycle going through this
pathway. And it worked out
pretty well if you go back and
look at that the movement of
Sylvester and Rob on the bikes
the dynamics are matching
pathway of the bike and that's
the only way we can figure out
how to do it.
Ed Kramer: The funniest thing
would be if you took footage of
Diana and superimposed it over
the final footage.
Unknown: Yeah, I would have been
good to when that company was
bought and we did Judge Dredd
with them. We moved to
Williamstown, we were in Lenox
we moved up to Williamstown into
MASS MoCA. That's when we got
the contract to do the spider
man ride for universal invented
squinching and dome projection.
Frank was pivotal in writing all
that software, he was rendering
orthographic cameras facing left
forward, right up and down. And
then doing some kind of ray
tracing into the imagery to
create the curved screen, the
wide super wide angle imagery in
stereo. So it had to be left and
right. It's really complicated
stuff makes my head hurt just to
think about. That's why I had
frank around. The thing that
stands out about that project I
remember was one day we were
sitting around thinking
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about the squinching problem.
And Greg Juby was one of our
animators, he said, You know
what, if we have a camera, and
it's looking through like a
window into a scene, and we see
a perspective image through that
window, that is exactly what we
want to see on the screen. Yeah,
but our projector is not here,
it's over here. So what we want
to do is we want to project
exactly that image from here.
And so the idea was you take
those, render it like inside the
window, and take those corners
and stretch them out to the full
frame, stretch it out so that
when you projected from the
front, when you look at it from
this angle, you see exactly that
image through the window, that
was the leap of imagination that
Greg Juby came up with, if you
do corner pinning if you render
an image through a window, and
then you take each point and
stretch the image up into the
corner. So that's flat. That's
what you want to project from
right in front of the screen
onto the screen, and it'll look
right from that angle. And that
was the birth of squinching. It
was very, very successful
because the audience is on a
moving motion base moving past
the screen. So you not only have
the left and right imagery,
giving you stereoscopic cues.
But you also have a feeling of
parallax objects in the
foreground would move past
faster than objects in the
background. So you have parallax
and stereoscopy admitted, very
compelling 3d effect. And that's
part of the reason that that
ride was so successful and still
runs 23 years later. It's
amazing.
Ed Kramer: The spider man ride
is still active in Orlando,
maybe 10
Unknown: years ago, they re
rendered our animation files, so
they could project in video
rather than eight perf 70.
Ed Kramer: They were using eight
per film eight per 70. That's
Unknown: what we deliver. Yeah,
for that
Ed Kramer: long they were using
70 millimetre film.
Unknown: We had a solitaire film
recorder here in a frame with a
65 millimetre camera, and we
shot all those Spider Man scenes
here in house. As I say about 10
years ago, they abandoned the
film and they use 4k projectors
and they re rendered all of our
stuff, same animation. We gave
them all the data so they re
rendered it with probably with
some lighting improvements. I'm
not sure but it's still running
2024 It'll be 30 years that
spider man has been running.
Running daily. At Islands of
Adventure and also in Osaka.
Japan is running there as well.
That is amazing. I don't think
there's any other ride that's
that's lasted that long. On, we
had rented the Mohawk Theatre in
North Adams to screen our
footage, we had a 70 millimetre
projector because we wanted to
see it on a big screen to check
resolution. So we went through
the whole rigmarole put up a
screen went into this nasty old
smelly, abandoned theatre, but
we were able to see our
SpiderMan imagery at full size.
And along about that time, this
producer named Jed Wheeler came
to visit are going over to watch
some dailies at the bow hawk.
And he came along and he said,
Wow, this is fantastic. I'm
doing this opera with Robert
Wilson and Philip Glass. Robert
wants to have this 50 foot tall
human foot come down on stage
and land and said, How the fuck
am I going to build this 50 foot
tall foot? And how am I going to
transport it? You know, can I
won't fit through the Lincoln
Tunnel, you know, how do I get
into Manhattan? But you guys
could just make a projection on
a big screen of the foot coming
down. We wouldn't have to build
the foot. I said, Yeah, that's
true. We could do that. And then
Diana, she said, Well, we could
do the whole opera and computer
animation. I said no, no, no,
don't say. But they fell in love
with this idea. And that's how
we got the contract to do
monsters of grace, which was
this 74 minute long digital
opera, which was five per 70
millimetre film projected onto a
screen with Philip Glass and his
ensemble playing live in the pit
is all composed by Philip and
lyrics from the Turkish poet
Rumi from 14th century or
something or other. We were
making lots of money on the
spider man ride and we're losing
lots of money on monsters a
great side we kind of broke even
we made an impact in both areas
and ride attractions. Like I say
spider man still running. And in
the art world, it was the first
digital opera anybody ever seen.
I'm still astounded that we were
able to get that thing done
because it was definitely four
minutes long stereoscopic, so it
was really 148 minutes of
footage that we had to get done
inside of a year. And the budget
was like 1.3 million or
something, the only way we were
able to pull it off was we hired
people and we told them, we're
not gonna be able to pay you
what you normally get paid. This
is an art project the budgets
ridiculous, we may not even be
able to finish it but we're
gonna try for the team just
jumped in full blast. So Spider
Man's on one half of the studio
monsters a great season, the two
completely opposite ends of the
spectrum. You know, Spider Man
is like, crazy, you know, lasers
and explosions. And, and over
here we're saying, just trying
to get the right colour blue.
For the background. Working with
Robert as an artist was
challenging. He didn't really
have any interest in the
technology. He's used to sitting
in theatre and telling his
technicians, you know what
percentage of pink lights on the
top and a percentage of blue
lights on the bottom and, and he
just had these slow moving
colours things. So it was a real
truck to work in that slow of a
pace. Everything was super,
super slow. There's a scene
where this boy on a bike rides
from 100 yards away up to the
camera, and the scene is nine
minutes long. That's a long time
for this kid who got like 30
yards on a bike and super slow
motion. He said yeah, but that's
what I want. The rendering was
the first big problem we had to
solve. I went to Silicon
Graphics, I knew that they have
warehouses where they put their
brand new machines and they
burned them in for a month or so
to find out which chips are
going to fail. And then they
replace those chips that these
machines are then sent to the
client. So I said well, can we
use that computing time to
render this opera and we'll give
you a credit for it, they agreed
to that. So we were able to do
all of our rendering on these
brand new Silicon Graphics
machines for free and we never
would have gotten the show done
if it hadn't been for that.
Ed Kramer: This is your genius
Jeff being able to figure out
how to just get this shit done.
Unknown: That was one that we
were very lucky on. The other
one I'm proud of because it
exploited my optical printing
background, we were having to
create 265 millimetre negatives
left eye and right eye 74
minutes long the film recorder
that we had, which could do 65
millimetre, it took about a
minute and a half to shoot each
frame with our little calculator
we figured out it'll take nine
months to shoot to shoot a show
that we needed to have done in
two months and talk with people
like John Hughes at rhythm and
hues and a couple other
companies who had laser
recorders, but they only shot
35. But they could do a frame in
six seconds, not minute and a
half. What we did was we took
our 70 millimetre frame, did an
anamorphic squeeze two to one
squeeze and inverted the lookup
tables so that we would shoot on
35 millimetre film a first
generation IP squeezed in Super
35. So as much 35 millimetre
film frame as we could possibly
use squeezed the image and scan
it out in six seconds. So we got
it all done. And then we took
that original IP and with a
anamorphic lens on an optical
printer expanded it out to a 65
millimetre negative on an
optical printer, and we got it
done in time.
Ed Kramer: That is an insane
story. It also requires people
to have an unbelievable
knowledge of how film works. IP
enter positive
Unknown: right right. Well, we
skipped photo Local generation
there by inverting the lookup
table, so the original image was
a positive image. And then when
you when you shoot that onto a
negative that becomes a negative
from which you can make release
print for the show.
Ed Kramer: You were able to get
it done in time because you are
able to figure out this
unbelievable workaround. Right,
right. Get it back out on film.
Unknown: Yeah, it looked good.
It looked good. And it's
actually really
Ed Kramer: worked well. It How
did Stargate come about? I
Unknown: think it was Michael
Van hamburger. And again, our
producer that approached the
Stargate team, we showed them
our demo reel which had both
Luxor footage and Judge Dredd
footage. And they were impressed
with the work. And again, we
said, well, we have a little
different way of operating we
have mobile teams, we can grab
people on equipment and roll
them into the most optimal place
for them to do their work. In
this case, it probably right
next to your editorial
department on Sunset, we'll put
a team of people that are
qualified with all our
equipment. We'll roll them in
setup right next to your
editorial. So when you're done
editing, you can come over and
see what we're doing and we work
together. This is our new modus
operandi, in terms of visual
effects is to have mobile units
that could just like be
temporarily put in a position
like we did with Doug and Diane
Perlman for Judge Dredd. We do
the same thing with Stargate. We
put a team of people right there
in his face and get it done. So
Ed Kramer: that was the Carroll
co building right across the
street from Tower Records on
Sunset and Spargo.
Unknown: Stargate was a fun
project and we hired Jeff Oaken
to be our visual effects
supervisor. Did some really, I
think seminal work in that
project wall of water that was
the Stargate that people went
through. We had a lot of fun
with that.
Ed Kramer: Was it called the
curse Sploosh or something?
Unknown: Carthage Carthage
Carthage Yeah, that was where he
had this new big tank of water.
And we have an air cannon the
tank was filled with waters
about I don't know two feet in
diameter, and we had the camera
mounted on the side so we can
shoot air pressure pushing down
into the water to make a
cathodic but we didn't know how
much air pressure to set the
cannon on. It went from like one
to 500 So there was try 100
Start the camera rolling and hit
the thing. It evacuated all of
the water on the camera and
everybody like it turned out to
be one pound wasn't about the
right amount to make the
Carthage 100 Just 100 times too
much power and got us all wet.
But it's pretty funny.
Ed Kramer: Say that's that's the
kind of story my listeners are
gonna love.
Unknown: That's what a Jeff
Hawkins favourite stories
Ed Kramer: going into that
project, you knew they were
going to be a lot of pretty big
technical challenges. What did
you see as the big technical
challenges?
Unknown: The transformation of
the headdresses I think was the
one that spooked me the most you
shoot the character without the
headdress, you shoot the
character with a headdress, and
then you have to you remember
you did you had to go in and and
create all these little sections
that you would like then wipe
off to reveal and it had to
match up, you know, the two
things had to match up. And I
think the cameras were moving as
well. So it's, it's very, very
spooky going through the
Stargate, we had a laser that
would show us where the person's
face the surface would be, you
know, as a scanning laser. So as
that went for, we knew what
parts should be visible and what
parts should be behind the
apparent water level. That stuff
wasn't too bad. We had some
spaceships that flew around,
they were pretty
straightforward. It was those
morphs that had me most worried.
Ed Kramer: I remember at the
beginning, we were talking about
are we ready yet to actually
create these in 3d geometry and
track them perfectly to
movements of the character and
then be able to use them with
their 3d animation. And I just
didn't think we were quite at
that point. I
Unknown: didn't think we had the
rendering the software at a
point where it would look
realistic.
Ed Kramer: Fortunately, elastic
reality had just come out with
this morphing software that
allowed us to use the original
pixels that were shot right.
There was never any transition
to a CGI object that may be or
maybe not at that point in time.
Unknown: Oh real footage
squished and compressed and made
made to do our will. Today we'd
probably make a different
decisions. We build a helmet and
render it and render man and it
looked fantastic. Exactly.
Ed Kramer: And I'm sure you did
a lot of that stuff in the X Men
movies. We did indeed. Any last
words before we leave Stargate
and move on.
Unknown: Once after Stargate,
I'm looking at my own imdb.com
Ed Kramer: I've got it open
here. So let's see. Theatre time
Luxor. Live Luxor pyramid clear
and present. You know, we didn't
talk about clear and present.
Oh, that
Unknown: was a blast.
Ed Kramer: That was one of the
most fun projects I've ever
worked on.
Unknown: That was particularly
exciting for me because I got to
go up in the jet, the camera jet
that was used on top gun. And
Lee Lacey is the guy's name who
owns the jet and it's a private
jet. It's got 235 millimetre
cameras in the fuselage. One has
a periscope going up through the
roof of the jet with a mirror
You could rotate so you could
shoot any direction above the
plane and the other had a
periscope grade down below so
you could shoot below.
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It's a camera plane, we went up
to the Fallon Air Force Base,
the Air Force lent us a pilot
and FAA team. So we were flying
along and the FAA team that were
on the radios Okay, now just
come by underneath our left wing
for just a tracking shot, we're
gonna rotate the camera to show
the establishing shot of the
plane approaching the drug
dealers hacienda. And so the guy
came by. And he was like, we
couldn't even begin to turn the
camera that fast. You know? So
can you can you can you do it
about you know, maybe about
100 200 feet further away. So we
have a chance to track with you
see the guy out the front laces,
okay, and I'm looking around, I
see that I see the plane out
there with the door straight
down. He's like doing figure
eight around us to get back into
position. And then he came by
and did a much much slower, you
know, we could track him and
then of course, we had him drop
a hit the dummy bomb that we we
hadn't dropped but I think we
replaced the bomb with the CG
bomb. And then we had the shot
where we want them to go down
through the clouds heading for
the ground through the clouds to
fall CG bomb spiralling in front
of the going through the clouds.
And then we reveal the hacienda.
Yeah, that was a fun sequence.
Ed Kramer: I had no idea you
were in that plane shooting that
footage.
Unknown: Years later, I was in a
restaurant in New York with some
friends. And Harrison Ford walks
in with a bunch of people.
Technically, I worked with
Harrison on clear and present
danger, you know? Yeah, yes.
Your friends are like saying
yeah, name dropping your
bullshit, you know, so parison
walking with the girls, it's
gonna go out and put her in a
taxi. I went outside and he put
a taxi and I said, So Harrison.
I just want to say hi, my
company did that smart bomb and
clear and present danger. See?
Oh, man, that was the coolest
shot in the film.
Can we come in? He's got his arm
around me. Brings you back to my
day. It was good to see. My
friends.
Ed Kramer: And of course that
was before the days of iPhones
when somebody would get a little
selfie.
Unknown: Harrison was cool. He
had not met me before. But he
did a nice thing for me bringing
me back in and, and shaking my
hands. Hey, good to see you
again.
Ed Kramer: That's a great little
story. The very few times that
I've actually met Hollywood
stars. They've all been just so
nice like that. Some
Unknown: more than others, but
but for the most part, yeah. Son
of the mask? Yes. Yes. Did you
work on that?
Ed Kramer: I did a bunch of
shots at ILM of the baby,
particularly the shots where
he's wearing the yellow, kind of
fuzzy outfit and he's got a
rattle. The dog comes in and he
jumps through the ceiling. And
Unknown: we did the conception
sequence, which was
Ed Kramer: not released in the
United States release.
Unknown: So funny because we had
the sperm is green sperm.
They're all racing to get to the
egg. There's always other sperm
white sperm like Regulus burns,
the green sperms, the
Whitesboro. They're all racing
to get the egg and we sent that
as a sequence into the studio,
the studio showed it to the
MPAA. And they said, well, it's
going to be an R. And so they
came back to us and I said well,
I cut out like half of the
sperm. So we rendered it again
with half the sperm. And they
said it's our Alright, take out
all of the Whitesburg and just
leave the Greensboro and we set
it again they said what part of
no sperm Don't you guys
understand the sperm in there,
it's gonna be an R. And so they
cut it. They cut it from the
from the US release. It shows up
in the DVD and the international
releases but it doesn't show up
in the US theatrical release.
Ed Kramer: Was there anything
CGI wise that was intriguing
about that? Well,
Unknown: it was kind of a homage
to squash and stretch type
animation, you know the old cel
animation where the eyeballs
would stretch out so we were
trying to tip of the hat to the
Ed Kramer: old animators.
Absolutely. Tex Avery, I think
is the savoury Exactly.
Unknown: Then there was
surrogates, which was where we
took Bruce Willis and euthanize
him made him look younger. In
the movie he's supposed to be in
his 50s as he is in real life,
the conceit of the movie is that
everybody has a robot that lives
their life out in the real
world. They lie in bed watching
what's happening through their
robots eyes, and the robot can
look 30 or 25. You know, so we
had to take footage that we shot
at Bruce Willis and make him
look young and pretty. And we
went in and did some D gobbling
getting rid of it. chin will
smooth out his eyes and made his
ear lobes shorter, you know,
smooth out his whole face made
him look young made him look
dirty. And we delivered a lot of
shots, we developed a sort of a
pseudo AI approach, you know,
where we clean up one frame, and
then we would apply that same
series of modifications to
subsequent frames. So if we
didn't have to do it, frame by
frame, we could get the computer
to kind of get the hang of it
and help us out. We did a lot of
research to be able to do that
on a lot of shots. This
Ed Kramer: is just another
example of you in your career,
pre dating, the things that have
become common, like 1015 years
later, the work that LM did for
the Irishman, right. That's what
it was, it was using AI
techniques, it was machine
learning to do age regression.
And here you are doing that,
like, what, 15 years earlier,
Unknown: at the time, I thought,
you know, we can start a company
to just do this, you know,
because Hollywood is so vain.
And actors want to remain young
looking as much as possible.
Yeah, but we won't be able to
show our work, because there'll
be contracts that say you can't
show before and after. Anyway,
there's a company that does
nothing but age work. They just
can't show their demo reel. But
then the next one was robbed
one, which is an Indian project.
This was when we decided that we
didn't want to run a visual
effects company anymore.
Although we did a bunch of shots
on that show that synthetic Bian
studios, I didn't want to gear
up to like a lot of people and a
lot of equipment to do a big
show we did the most difficult
parts of that show, which is the
cubic transformations. We worked
with Hellgate Matthias, who
wrote software for us and ice,
which was part of Softimage
three was changing from one
thing into another, they hired
me to be the supervisor, I spent
six months in India and three
months in London shooting this
film had a lot of fun, it made
me realise that I'm much better
off being a supervisor than
running the whole show and being
responsible for everything.
Because that was making me just
go crazy. The Indians could
worry about all their personnel
and hardware and software and
budgeting, we would just do a
very small set of very
complicated shots, and I'd be
paid as a supervisor. Since
then, I've been really working
only as a supervisor, and not
really hiring people and setting
up teams in LA or anywhere. It's
better for my brain to just do
what I do and not have to be
running a company. You seem
Ed Kramer: to have just
navigated these waters really
well over the course of your
career, figuring out how to
scale a company how to scale
what you personally do, I
realised that we miss talking
about X Men.
Unknown: Oh, yeah. X man. Sure
the character of mystique played
by Rebecca Romain needed to be
able to transform from her blue
or purplish, scaly, red haired
superhero character into anybody
else who had the ability to
transform. And so 20th Century
Fox wanted a signature in effect
for this transformation. They
want it to be really, really
cool. It's again, Frank bits
working with us, we studied her
latex costume that was glued to
her and it had all these little
scales. And so we designed a
transformation that would travel
across her body, her skills
would come out of her body that
sort of flutter a little bit and
start spreading out almost like
a wave in a football stadium
with clothes would come out and
then there'll be a fleshy part
that would separate out and
inside that would be the
incoming texture of whoever
she's going to be impersonating.
If it was like a guy in a
business suit with crunchy part
would be revealed. And then this
was split apart and you see a
suit being revealed. And this
transformation would travel
across her body until she had
completely transformed from one
to the other. We didn't want to
do a morph because everybody's
seen morphing forever. So he
wanted it to be more of a
sequential thing that would look
like a mould growing across her.
So I was like 18 steps to get
all this to work. We had to get
outgoing Rebecca character in
the same position as the
incoming character so that it
would match a one day that was
really kind of tricky was we had
a scene where Magneto was going
to transform into Mystique, we
shot Mystique first, she was in
a police detention area sitting
back like this. He's going to
transform into Magneto from this
position. We shot this version
of her then of course, Sir Ian
McKellen comes in, just shoot
his half of it. And I say, Okay,
this shot you want me sitting
back like this with your arms
back like this? And he says no,
Magneto would never be in that
position. I said, Yeah, well,
you're not really Magneto. See,
this is Mystique transforming
into Magneto. And he says no, is
in front of a whole crew. When
Mystique transforms, she
transforms into Magneto. She
doesn't transform into somebody
who looks like Magneto. She
transformed into Magneto. And he
would never sit that way. I was
like, Oh, your transformation,
her CG version leaning forward
to match into the position that
certainly would allow me to
shoot him and we did lots and
lots of those transitions for
the first 3x Men movies. One,
two and three years. They
weren't called One, two and
three, but they the first three
and then after that they did it
all in house at Sony
Ed Kramer: before I forget. I do
want you to talk a little read
about and I hope you'll love
this talk about the A frame
Unknown: Diana and I were living
in Laurel Canyon and renting a
place and people told us they
wanted to sell that house that
we were renting and we didn't
want to buy that house. So we
went out driving around trying
to find some other place to
live. And we got lost in the
hills. And we came up this
Mulholland Highway, we passed
this a frame house and I thought
what a stupid ass house. You
know, there's no snow in
Hollywood, you know, there's no
snow in LA. Why would you have
an A frame that's designed for
snow? It turned out to be a dead
end. So turned around, came
back. And I said, Well, I mean,
it's kind of an interesting
looking house. Out of the corner
of my eye, I saw some bushes in
front of the house and I saw
something behind the bushes, the
guy that owned the house wanted
to sell it and he lived out in
Long Beach, he didn't want it to
be empty. So he let some 20 year
old kids stay there for free.
And what they did is they took
the for sale sign and they hid
it behind the bushes. So nobody
would see it. But I saw it. And
I stopped the car I got out and
move the bushes. I wrote down
the number and call the guy and
that's how we got the house.
Actually, it was not it was when
I was at omnibus and I was
director of the motion picture
visual effects division or
whatever. And I had, you know,
three projects millennium and
Captain power coming into the
studio and I was gonna get paid
6% commission on the growth of
these projects coming up a whole
shitload of money. So I said, we
can buy this house, I said, I
said to the guy, well, you know,
we need to just rent it for a
while until you know the money
starts coming in, then we'll buy
it. So he said, Okay, well, I'll
rent it to you for a few months.
And then I went out of business
we just talked about. So like
Homina Homina. What do we do now
amazingly, out of the blue, this
project came in an animation to
teach Japanese schoolchildren
how to multiply two fractions
together. So it involves you
know, a over b and c over d
moving these little things
around. And we had to do like
five minutes of animation. Two
weeks to do it. We guys had a
budget is $30,000, which is
exactly what we need to get a
down payment. We'll do it. We
stayed up all night cranking out
this animation for this Japanese
thing. Got $30,000 and put the
downpayment and got the house,
we were so lucky to find the
house to find out that it was
for sale and who have suddenly
$30,000 coming from nowhere to
pay the down payment so that we
can get in here is astounding.
Ed Kramer: I gotta say Jeff has
not once mentioned that this
house was directly underneath
the Hollywood sign.
Unknown: Oh yeah, it is the
closest house to the Hollywood
sign. And that band from the 60s
the association lived here. They
never my love and windy and
cherish all those sorts of sappy
love songs from the 60s were
written here at the A frame and
Michael Van Hamburg and our
producer says that he used to
work for Graham Nash. And he
says that David Crosby met
Graham Nash at a party in this
house. They were introduced by
mamma cast, and they were all
doing acid. That's the folklore.
I can't really prove that. But
that's what I've heard. And I
believe it.
Ed Kramer: I believe it too. And
those are the stories that I've
always told. Because because I
got to work in that house. We
were doing clear and present
danger we set up downstairs and
outside and it's just an
incredible, incredible place.
And it's been the site of a
number of parties during
SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles.
Unknown: Yes, indeed, Larry
Weinberg was married here. We've
had weddings, we've had some
shoots, lots of parties, the
guys from psi, the Swiss speaker
manufacturers party every year,
during the National Association
of music marketers of the music
show until COVID. had been every
year, they would come here and
have a big party for all their
clients here. Yeah, we've had
some great parties, it lends
itself to that sort of thing.
Oh, wait, wait a second. It's my
son. Let me just say, Hey,
Jackson, I'm doing a zoom call
right now. So let me call you
back a little bit later. Okay.
There's something I want to ask
you about, about building a
website for me. I have a new new
company I want you to help me
with so let's chat later on
today. Okay. All right.
Ed Kramer: Okay, well, I think I
just got a scoop on some news.
Unknown: Well, during the
pandemic, I've been sort of
scratching my head, what am I
going to do? No film work.
There's no supervisory work that
I could find. So I just looked
around and I said, Well, I'll
build a DIY Atmos mixing studio
in a garage. So that's what I've
done. I've got to 12 channels of
sound and mixing an Atmos the
bone daddies that that was the
band that did Don't touch me,
our first film they came on,
they're still they're still out
there. They came up here and we
recorded 14 songs in three days
in the A frame. And now I'm re
mixing them in Atmos, it's a
blast. It's having having so
much fun, something I can do by
myself. I don't need anybody
else. I don't need any support.
I can just dig into it and learn
about sound mixing. In 3d. Well,
Ed Kramer: there's so much there
one, the band from Don't touch
me.
Unknown: There's a really cool
system now called Sound
particles, which is a particle
system and each particle you can
associate a soundtrack with. So
you have a microphone like a
Atmos microphone seven channel
microphone, and you can have a
particle floating around and
doing whatever you want. And
then it's emitting a soundtrack
whatever sound you associated
with it. What I'm moving towards
is having a routine where really
objects that are emitting sounds
the same gets mixed
automatically give a whole
environment of founding meeting
objects. And all the sound is
coming in from the right angles.
When you're watching animation,
the sound is linked
Ed Kramer: to it in 3d. But I
need to wear headphones, you can
take
Unknown: that most Mix and
Render it with binaural audio.
So you can listen to it on
headphones, and you have a
pretty good 3d replication in
headphones. And then anybody who
has an Atmos setup would
obviously be able to hear it
precisely the way it's supposed
to sound. But the idea is in the
movie theatre, you could have
you know, automatically link 3d
animated objects with 3d sound.
And you wouldn't have to have
somebody go and try to mix it
and match it, it'd be
automatically linked to it. Kind
of fun stuff.
Ed Kramer: This is great,
because what you're doing in
your later years now is using
your ears more than your eyes.
Exactly.
Unknown: When we were working
together, you know, back in
Massachusetts or in LA, we had
like 85 people working for the
company, and I needed to have a
quarter of a million dollars in
the bank every two weeks to make
payroll, this is the most
terrifying thing. Because you
know what happens when you miss
payroll, bad things happen,
especially with all the visual
effects. Were going to Canada
for the tax rebates or to Asia
for the lower labour rates. I
figured I'm not going to be
competing with Sony and ILM and
DreamWorks building a big studio
to do animation. So I've just
been really working as a
supervisor, you know, and I can
just do what I do best, which is
know how to talk between the
technical and artistic people.
Ed Kramer: As we're heading
toward the end of this reflect
on Jeff closer his life. Where
do you see yourself in the
history, the evolution of the
computer graphics industry,
Unknown: I like to think that we
tilled some new soil along the
way, we were always trying to
find solutions to problems that
had not yet been solved. Back in
the olden days, from year to
year, SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH,
there was a real remarkable
difference in the progress of
imaging of rendering images.
Each year, you can see a big
step, and everybody would
applaud the big step. It's not
like a big jump in quality level
anymore. All the difficult
problems I think had been
solved. And it's now more of
volume of effects. Look at films
today. And it's just
overwhelming how much stuff is
in there, how much work is put
into it. But don't go, Oh, God,
I've never seen that before, as
frequently as we used to. And in
terms of my role, I like to
think that we did our best to
work with a small team of
rockstars. And hopefully people
will look back and say, Oh, I
remember that flight of the
Navigator. That was cool. For a
spider man ride. That was cool.
I like to think people look back
and say, Well, he did some cool
stuff.
Ed Kramer: That's great. This
was exactly what I was hoping it
would be great. Dude, I can't
tell you how much I appreciate
this. Dude, let
Unknown: me know where you're
gonna be in LA though, because I
want to I want you to hear this
room. It sounds fantastic in
here.
Ed Kramer: I can't wait because
I'm not focusing as much on
computer graphics anymore. But I
still play keys
Unknown: around our grand piano
and tune it. So you're all set.
Come on over.
Ed Kramer: All right, I'll do
that. All right. Thanks, Jeff. I
really appreciate this.
Unknown: Thanks for listening to
CGI Fridays with Industrial
Light and Magic alum Ed Kramer.
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